I am in the process of building a new layout and I have a lot of cat5 wiring left over from wiring my house and was wondering if it was strong enough to use for the expressnet wiring? thank you, Hank M
Is that the control bus wiring, that goes around the layout to all the jacks you plug the throttles in? If so, yes, Cat 5 should work unless you have a very big layout. Cat 5 will not work for your track bus, though.
I got my panel jacks from this place:
http://www.oselectronics.com/ose_p112.htm
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Hank,
Ethernet cables normally use RJ45 connectors. What you need for most Expressnet devices are RJ12 connectors(the same size as RJ11 phone connectors, but with 6 wires) There should be no 'power' in the Expressnet, so only 'signals' should be there. From Lenz's on-line wiring diagrams, it looks pretty straight forward. Here is a link to the Lenz Info: http://www.lenz.com/products/xpressnet/index.htm
Jim Bernier
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Lenz throttles plug into a 5-pin DIN jack, with the 45-degree angular spacing for the pins. (There is also a 60-degree angular spacing standard for DIN plugs/jacks. You want 45.)
or, schematically:
This is for the throttle connections. I don't know about any other XpressNet stuff.